Heretofore, in the event that a driver becomes unable to drive due to a sudden illness or the like during his or her driving a vehicle, an accident may be caused. Therefore, to prevent accidents by detecting such driving incapability state of a driver has been proposed.
In an emergency refuge-seeking device described in Patent Literature 1, various information is acquired from, for example, a physiological measurement device or a sight line or face direction measurement device, thereby recognizing the driver state, such as degree of deterioration of driver's consciousness, degree of driver's awakeness, or driver's posture. When a driver state declines, emergency refuge-seeking assistance is provided. The physiological measurement device measures items of information about, for example, heartbeat, breathing, and brain waves of a driver. The sight line or face direction measurement device captures an image of a driver by means of a driver camera and recognizes items of information about, for example, sight line, blinking, and face direction of the driver from the captured image.
The inventors of the present application have found the following. The device described in the Patent Literature 1 uses items of information about the driver's heartbeat, breathing, brain waves, and so on, in order to recognize the driver state. However, measuring the driver's heartbeat, breathing, brain waves, and so on, within a vehicle requires a complicated device, which may be difficult to realize.
In addition, the inventors of the present application have found the following. In the event that a driver has a sudden illness or the like during his or her driving, direction of the driver's face may collapse. However, direction of the driver's face may collapse also when the driver drives looks aside during driving, for example. In the device described in the Patent Literature 1, collapse direction of a face, caused by factors other than deterioration of driver's consciousness, sudden illness, or the like, are not taken into account. Therefore, the device may erroneously detect driving incapability state of a driver.